Warning: This journal contains spoilers for the game.

If you know me you know I tend to complain a lot about the pokemon games, though this new generation was pretty close to turning my negative opinions around. That is until about half way through the game where the story seemed to fall flat on its face.
I actually liked the beginning of the game far more than most other pokemon titles. What sets it apart from the others is how the character was given a letter to give to his/her mother explaining that you’ve been chosen to partake in this adventure rather than just saying “I’m going on a journey, ok bye!” It just felt a lot more realistic for someone to explain to your parent that you’re going on a huge mission which could change the world as we know it.
My only problem with this starting however is that there was enough concern from your mother about what you are going to do. She simply says, “oh that’s so exciting, I’ll go pack your bag”. It would have been better if she had tried to explain that what you’re about to do is a big step in your life, and that it could be dangerous in the wide open world, but if it’s what you really want to do then she’ll support you all the way, before then asking if you’re sure you want to go ahead with it. Something along those lines would have been the icing on the cake, it would have added so much more to an already decent opening.

Again once we set off on our journey I was still pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable everything was, in previous generations I had already found a mountain of stuff to complain about but this time there was barely anything.
When we met the pokemon professor we got the info on our big mission, to find the secret of mega evolution. We searched from city to city to find whatever info we could, we challenged gym leaders in the hopes that they could provide answers, and eventually we finally meet someone who has not only studied mega evolution, but also found the secrets behind it. …and this is where the whole story seems to collapse in on itself. It turns out that the professor who sent us on this mission is not only good friends with the guy who knows about mega evolution, but also studied under him for a while too. The professor knew he had the information, so there was no point in sending us out to find the secret at all, the professor could have just got the info he needed by picking up the phone.

This is the half way point in the game and now there’s pretty much no reason for us to be travelling around. As the player we know from previous games that we should just continue around the region, going from city to city, challenging the gyms, and compete in the pokemon league. But the in game character has no motivation, no reason to keep travelling around at all, why wouldn’t he just go home if there’s nothing else to do?
The only other quest which could keep him travelling is completing the pokedex, but even that has been made pointless since we find out early on that the professor has already given out a pokedex to many people around the region, and we know that the professor can collect data from them, so he could easily combine the data from all the pokedexes out there to make a complete or near complete list of pokemon. So there’s no need to tell a single person to try and complete the whole thing. Also along the way on out journey we keep running into two characters who upgrade our pokedex more and more every time we meet for each new part of the region. So why not upgrade it to show all areas at once instead of going out of your way and having to seek the character out several times to do it a little bit at a time?

The characters in the game aren’t too bad, you have several friends who each have their own unique personality and life goals, they all set out along with you on the same missions so you’re never really alone on your journey. But that turns into a problem quite quickly, you travel alone but your friends show up to talk every few minutes. At first it’s not a big deal since they help new players learn some of the basics, but after a while you can’t help but think “oh god just leave me alone and let me get on with the game!!!” It would have been much better if they had shown up far less often that they actually do. Maybe every 2-3 towns or something like that.

The move to 3D was pulled off really well. I had my doubts about it before the game was released but it actually turned out far better than I imagined, the visuals are beautiful though a bit simple due to the small size of most of the towns.
The 3DS 3D option wasn’t implemented very well at all, though I and from what I’ve heard a lot of other people don’t tend to use that very often. Most of the time the 3D option isn’t even allowed, yet a lot of things would have been perfect in 3D, such as the creature on the title screen, instead we just get the “Pokemon” title displayed in 3D. When you get a gym badge it spins around almost like it was meant for the 3D option but unfortunately it isn’t active at that time.
But even when the 3D was allowed and turned on you could barely even tell it was active, I found myself turning it on and off and on and off to try and see a difference but it was only a tiny bit affective.

The music was beautiful, this is one of the things I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with in these games, the creators always seem to come up with great things to fit whatever is happening on screen, there’s always so many memorable tunes and this game is no different.

When it comes to the actual gameplay there isn’t much I can say, it’s pokemon, it’s pretty much played the same as it always has been, it’s a formula that works and once again transitioning the style to 3D was done perfectly. The main difference which I liked was in places such as an old cave where the view switched to behind the character, so you couldn’t really see where you were going, and as you got deeper into the cave it was easy to feel lost after a bunch of twists and turns.
My only issue with the gameplay is that it feels far more easy than previous games, not as easy as B&W2 but I still found myself most of the time taking down an enemy with a single hit. The only challenge I had was the guy guarding victory road and the pokemon champion.

When I first saw the enemy in this game, team flare, I was pleasantly surprised again, they didn’y seem like some super evil organization, they just came across as a bunch of bullies who care about nothing but themselves. I found it refreshing that they were just a bunch of thugs and not a group trying to take over or destroy the world …and then they turned into a group who wanted to destroy the world. It was just exciting that they could have been something different for once, but then they followed the same old path that most evil teams before them went down, and even then their plan was stupid as hell, basically boiling down to “we have to destroy everyone to stop them destroying themselves” and their ultimate life destroying weapon was a complete joke, they actually managed to activate it and what did it do? Nothing, it basically fizzled out on them. Jessie and James from the cartoon were more of a threat than this!

The ending of this game was just weird, there was an announcer who mentioned the five people who saved the world or something along those lines, yet I don’t recall three of them doing anything, in fact I seem to remember one of them running away from the danger on more than one occasion.
Plus then there’s the guy who created the ultimate weapon, I think I may have missed this explanation but how is this guy still alive? He’s over 3000 years old.

The game did make me laugh in a few places though, usually through some of the weird dialogue before/after a battle, for example the guy you run into who likes to sniff Tauros. Also in the pokeball factory where they say that if team flare steals the pokeballs they won’t be able to make friends with pokemon. Sure because trapping them in little balls and forcing them to fight for your entertainment is what being a “friend” is all about right? It’s not like you could just be nice to them or anything, feed them treats, pet them, etc. Come on we know this is all about slavery and using pokemon as tools.

At this time I can’t really comment on the trading and online battling systems since I haven’t tried those yet, but from what I’m hearing they’ve improved it a lot from the older games.

So to sum it up, it’s a wonderful game, the same old pokemon that we’re used to, but where it really falls flat is the same place most generations do, the terrible story.

Part 2 of my Simon the Sorcerer 3D playthrough. This weeks mission, escaping the temple of life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqmdNwD8ksk

and this crappy voice is a good reason why I don't talk much in RL. Hopefully I'll get better at this commentary stuff over time. XD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg15FXfKgHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afNJc7w1w6Y

Just as the title says I've put my video of this years CFz fursuit parade up on youtube. Check it out. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLNsy8HXxrE

The next round of voting for  Kindle's macro games has begun, and at long last me and  dragonien have found our way back to each other. Plus I still have a whole lot of stuff in my bag to help us get BIG. So it's more than possible for me to make the big hunky dragon even more massive, or maybe we could share the goodies and both get big to show everyone what real giants look like. ;)

So go and vote for me and Dragonien over in this guys journal: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3501026/

Thanks :D

I just got back from Confuzzled and had one heck of a good time. Here's a little report that I quickly threw together showing how it went. ^^

Friday 25th

After arriving at the convention hotel on the Friday I went to check in straight away and was surprised at how fast it was this year. The previous years that I attended the convention check in took at least an hour due to the long cues, but registration being earlier this year, as well as the professional work of both the hotel and con staff, I was able to get everything sorted out in just a few quick minutes.
The hotel was gorgeous, there were various displays everywhere and the decorations put up by the con staff really showed off the ‘silver screen’ theme. There were big Oscars style statues through the halls, a red carpet leading up to the registration desk, and various signs and banners featuring furs dressed up as various movie characters.

At around 2pm the opening ceremony began, everyone gathered in the main hall where the staff was introduced to the crowd, and the con was officially opened… however there was a special surprise, everyone made their way out of the hotel and towards the back of it, and a few minutes later the guest of honour arrived in a unique way, a helicopter flew up and circled around the hotel a couple of times before touching down a short distance from the crowd, then out stepped the guest of honour to greet everyone.

Once the opening ceremony was over everyone went their own ways, immediately after there was a BBQ and following that a few panels. I attended the ‘Meet the GoH’ panel where the guests of honour took part in a short Q&A session. Then there was a panel which was all about how you can get the most out of the convention.

One thing that a lot of people looked forward to however was Colson and Foxamoore’s concert where they performed a variety of songs together, and they did a fantastic job too, they worked so well together and put on one heck of a show.

At this point it was getting late, there were still a few things going on however such as the dances, and gaming arcades which went on well into the night.

Saturday 26th

In the morning I got to the dealers den pretty early as sponsors were allowed early access, there were so many things on sale and so many talented artists at work. I managed to get a couple of commissions in, picked up some badges from Funlaser’s table which I pre-ordered for myself and Dragonien, got a t-shirt from TaniDaReal’s table, and purchased some items from the convention’s table, though I was tempted to get a whole lot more.

Next up I checked out the ‘Basic Digital Colouring’ panel which was hosted by Crazy_Husky. He did a nice job of showing off how various features work in Photoshop and how you can use them to enhance your image, and explaining how everything works. From what I heard people definitely learned a thing or two from him.

The fursuit fiasco was insane, loads of fursuiters running around competing in a series of games; it was hilarious watching them all.

There was another panel hosted by Colson the GoH next where he talked and took questions about how he makes his music.

The next panel I attended was titled ‘Whose Fur Is It Anyway?’ which was an improve workshop which seemed to have more attendees than they planned for. Everyone was crammed into a small room at first before being moved to a bigger one. I didn’t do much in this event but it was still a lot of fun seeing the different improve games and everyone definitely had a good time.

The pawpet show went all out to entertain the crowd this year, the jokes in the show had people laughing the whole way through, the animations between each scene were so cute, the guys operating the puppets and doing the voices etc deserved that huge round of applause when it was all over.

Sunday 27th

To start off Sunday morning there was the fursuit parade, there was a huge number of suits this year and I managed to get quite a lot of footage of it on my camera, which I will try to edit together at put up on youtube just like I did with the previous years parades.

A few hours later the always entertaining Uncle Kage performed one of his story hour shows which was loads of fun. He managed to entertain people and even put across a good point that you shouldn’t be afraid to go up and talk to someone that you’re a fan of.

I was going to attend an event about animation but the room it was supposed to be in was moved, but on my way to find it I decided to stop and check out the fursuit dance competition instead. The people taking part had some great moves so it’s not surprising that the judges had nothing but good things to say about them.
I did leave a little before the end though to get some lunch so I have no idea at this point who won.

The charity auction started kind of late due to the huge number of items that were going into it this year. It started kind of slow and laid back but quickly went crazy like a lot of the other events, especially towards the end where some items were being sold for an incredibly high price. There was even a bidding war again this year for one of TaniDaReal’s pictures which eventually went for a little over £1000.

All that was left now was for people to have a good time together or enjoy the dances before the convention comes to an end the following morning.

Monday 28th

Monday morning was mostly filled with people going back and forth making sure they had packed everything before heading down to reception to check out. But before leaving there was still the closing ceremony where the con staff and hotel staff said a few words and officially brought the convention to a close with the attendees giving them all a well deserved round of applause for all the hard work they put into making the convention one of the biggest and best yet.

Additional

I thoroughly enjoyed the convention again this year, there were so many interesting people around, the suiters were a joy to watch with all of their crazy antics. There was so much detail and obvious hard work put into everything that you can’t help but respect the people who put it all together, that goes for both the con staff and the people who hosted events.
There were a few people who I was hoping to see around but wasn’t able to find but there’s always the following years to say hello to them.
It all goes by so fast but that just goes to show how much fun it was.

Thanks to everyone who made Confuzzled so great. Here’s hoping that the con continues to grow so it can bring so much happiness to many more people. I’ll see you all back there again next year. :D

It's that time of year again. Confuzzled is barely a day away, and from what I've heard this years con is going to be bigger and better than ever. So this Friday I'll be heading down to join the insanity. It should be quite the fun weekend. :D

*Giant husky runs through cities dragging a huge sled behind him*
"SnowSnowSnowSnowSnowSnowSnowSnowSnowSnow" :D

[EDIT] Problem has now been solved. Thanks to  huskyboy3 for the help. :D

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Today my firewall [ZoneAlarm] told me there was a new program update available, I downloaded it and started to install it. Once it was done it asked me to restart my computer, the computer shut down and proceeded to restart, however when starting back up it blue screened and had to restart again, but again it blue screened on start up and had to restart.
Now I can't turn on the computer without it blue screening and don't know what to do to fix it. Any help you can give will be appreciated.
I can turn on the computer in Safe Mode if anyone knows a way to solve the problem from there.

[edit] tried uninstalling ZoneAlarm in safe mode but that didn't fix the problem.

Had a few problems with the original video being blocked in the UK because of the music. So I decided to completely re-edit the thing in better quality and try to find some music that is hopefully ok to use. Now it looks MUCH better than the original upload. :3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfFK3GBgCsU

I had a little free time earlier after playing the beta of the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer, so I decided to write up a quick review of what I thought of the game.

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The Uncharted series has always been a fantastic series of games in just about every way you can imagine, with interesting and gripping stories, beautiful and incredibly detailed graphics, great controls, and more. However the online multiplayer mode seems to be where the game falls flat on its face.
The multiplayer mode in Uncharted 2 is a fun game but it is also filled with bugs that just never seem to have been fixed, and with the recent release of the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta you would at least expect the old bugs to have been fixed, but from the looks of things so far all of the old problems still seem to be there, and there may be even more.
Now it’s normal for a beta version of a game to have a lot of bugs so hopefully a lot of them will be ironed out by the time the full game is released later this year.

Before I talk about any of the problems with the game I’ll take a moment to mention a few of the good points. As usual the graphics in the game are beautiful, probably even more detailed than the previous games. The levels shown in the beta are full of action and have their own unique challenges, such as a level where you’re on the back of a truck which is chasing a plane, jumping from car to car while trying to shoot the opposite team is a far more interesting challenge than just running around a normal map. However the plane sequence only lasts a little while before it takes off and you move the action to an ordinary warehouse type map.

For a beta version of the game there is a good variety of weapons available, plenty for you to choose from such as the M4, AK-47, Pistole, RPG, M32-Hammer, as well as several shotguns, pistols, and more.

From time to time in a game, when a character dies they may drop a treasure which you can pick up and add to your collection. The more treasures you collect the more things you can unlock within the game, such as new abilities which you can add to your character.

In the character options you currently only have the basic characters to choose from which you can customise in a very limited way, such as picking generic shirts which all seem to look the same but you can re-colour them however you want. So at the moment the game is filled with the same Drake, Sully, or Generic bad guy running around, however that is something with will more than likely be expanded in the full game and probably with future expansion packs too.

When you’re making your character you can also create your own emblem which shows up around the levels you’re playing. You can make a decent variety of emblems so far however the sliders for tilting and re-sizing the pictures is very broken, you can slide some of them one way but not the other, and others you can’t seem to slide them at all.

Some of the problems carried over from the previous game include things like being extremely difficult to defeat someone on the opposite team. A couple of times I even stood right next to a none moving enemy and emptied both my machine gun and pistol ammo into him and he still didn’t go down.
On the rare occasions that you actually do defeat someone it rarely shows up on the score screen, so you could take down 3, 5, 10, or even more enemies and it will only show up around a quarter of the kills on the scoreboard.
The controls in the game seem slightly worse than the previous game, when you’re running around they seem a bit too smooth, the slightest touch of the controls when you want to turn sends you speeding in circles, but when you’re aiming a weapon the controls seem to stiff and slow.

The connection problems from the previous game are still as bad as ever, you could be running around a level when suddenly the screen fades to black and you are sent back to the lobby select screen with the message “you have left the game”. So whether you wanted to quit or not you’re sometimes just forced out of a game and lose all the points and achievement you earned while playing the level.

While there are some decent level types in the game such as team “deathmatch” and “capture the treasure”, there is one game type which seems very confusing, mainly because the rules change at random throughout the whole thing. At one point you could be playing a zone capture type game, then it’ll suddenly switch to capture the treasure, then a few minutes later it’ll switch to deathmatch, then to something else, and so on and so on.

So while this does look like a good game which promises to be a lot of fun, it currently seems like there’s a lot of problems that need to be sorted out first. I’m sure a lot of the bugs will be taken care of by the time the full game is released however I have my doubts that half of them will be improved. I would have thought that the first bugs to go before the beta was even released would be things like the random disconnect and near invincible enemies problems from the previous game.
But even if there are problems with the multiplayer mode the single player story should hopefully more than make up for it.

That's right, today is the big red beefcake  dragonien's birthday. Head over to his page and send him some love and birthday wishes.

Happy birthday Dragonien. Love ya. <3 <3 <3

Got back from the Confuzzled 2011 convention earlier today and decided to write up a type of quick con report for the heck of it. :P

Friday

Arrived around 2:20 in the afternoon just after the registration room opened. Things moved slowly but after seeing just how many people were actually there it’s not surprising. There were also plenty of fursuiters already bouncing around and having fun and a funny little puppet thing at the end of the registration line which interacted with people as they walked past and introduced people to some of the events that would be coming over the weekend.
A little later, after finding my room, unpacking some stuff, and getting settled in it was time for the opening ceremony where everyone was introduced to the staff, the guest of honour, told about this years chosen charity and some of the upcoming events. Then there was a little show/dance with a couple of fursuiters on the dance floor and the convention was declared officially open.
As soon as the opening ceremony was over people either flocked over to outdoor barbeque, to the bar, or to wherever they needed to go, and just like with every good UK barbeque, it wasn’t long before it started to rain. :P

Saturday

The day started off nice and early, with a good number of panels happening, I was torn between going to the ‘Meet the guest of honour’ panel or the ‘fursuit fiasco’ event. But in the end decided to watch the madness which was the fursuiters playing all sorts of crazy games, such as musical chairs, British bulldog, simon says, and some game where the suiters had to pop each others balloons which were tied to their legs.
After that I managed to find a moment to check out the dealers den, there were loads of different things on sale there from a huge variety of artists. I managed to pick up a few Confuzzled themed items such as a mug, and managed to get some really cool looking customised LED dogtags for me and Dragonien.
A little later I checked out the ‘How to write a webcomic’ panel hosted by the guest of honour, who gave everyone all sorts of helpful hints and tips towards setting up their own webcomics, including comic layouts, character development, etc.
The fursuit madness continued next with the Furrylimpics, where teams of fursuiters went head to head in all sorts of games.
After some dinner I joined the extremely long line for the Confuzzled 2011 pawpet show, which was plenty of fun, and just as good as last years performance.
Following the pawpet show was the open mic event, where con attendees could get up on stage and perform whatever they want. There wasn’t many people in the audience for this even but there was still enough people to make it an enjoyable experience.

Sunday

I started Sunday by going to the art improvement panel, where a speaker gave everyone a bunch of hints and tips to help people with all different parts of their drawing.
The advice from the art improvement panel was put to the test next when I attended the fursuit life drawing event, where a group of artists gathered around JD Puppy and Ember who were striking a variety of poses for everyone to draw.
A short time later I checked out the ‘Who’s Yerf Is It Anyway’ panel I’m sure I don’t really need to describe what this was about since it’s simply an improv event based on the popular TV series, Who’s Line Is It Anyway.
Following that was the fursuit parade. It’s always surprising to see just how many suiters there are at these conventions, there was a huge amount, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were even more than last year. It was also funny to see the reactions of passing people and motorists as they drove past while the suiters were posing just outside of the hotel.
Shortly after the parade was the ‘Cavalcade of Cack’, a puppet based sketch show that was just too funny for words to describe, the people who put on this show really did a fantastic job of entertaining the audience, they had the crowd roaring with laughter the whole way through.
After some dinner it was time for the charity auction, where there was lots of really good looking art and other items up for grabs. There wasn’t as much action as last year when they auctioned off the Tani cloth, but there was still some really high bids flying around. At the end everyone was told that the live auction alone raised just over £4000 for charity, and the final total raised including everything else would be revealed at Mondays closing ceremony.
After the auction there was still plenty to do with the dances that were going on to the early hours of the morning where everyone could party the night away.

Monday

Since the convention officially ends today there was naturally a big rush of people getting packed up and heading down to the lobby so they can check out of the hotel, so the whole area was completely packed full of people. But having everyone around down there would give them the chance to say their final goodbyes before heading off home just after the closing ceremony or whenever they are set to leave.
At a little past 11:00am the closing ceremony began, the staff were all brought on stage to the applause of the crowd, and they were all thanked along with all the people who made the convention happen.
As well as this they also revealed the total raised for charity this year from all the donations, auction events, etc. I can’t remember the exact total off the top of my head but I think it was somewhere just over £6000, and managed to beat last years total.
The theme for next year was also revealed, as well as the guests of honour, and from the looks of things next year is going to be bigger and even more fun than this year.
Straight after the closing ceremony everyone made their way outside to the front of the hotel for this years group photo, and with so many people here I’m surprised they managed to fit everyone in it. :P

Additional Stuff

The convention this year was so much fun, I had an absolute blast and the time just seemed to fly past. There was a huge variety of events to keep busy with every single day and there was never a dull moment.
The hotel was very nice too, so neat and tidy and clean. The room had a decent amount of space and was very comfortable to spend time in when I went back to relax a bit. The staff at the hotel were also very nice and did a great job.
The convention staff who put in so much time and effort deserved that huge round of applause they received at the closing ceremony, they did a fantastic job of making this a fun and hugely successful convention, and I can’t thank them all enough for everything they did.
I’m definitely looking forward to checking out the con again next year.

Woot! Just under a week until the Confuzzled convention here in the UK. :D
Hopefully gonna have plenty of fun there.
Not sure what I'll be doing there exactly yet, but I'll find something. X3

Fuck yeah! :D
Knightmare was always such an amazing show. :3